Patriot Flames

    I was walking my dog when I first decided to burn the old man's flag.  In fact, if I hadn't picked that dog out of the pound a few weeks before, I probably never would have seen the damn flag to begin with, and all the ensuing mess could have been avoided.  But that's life, isn't it?  You make your decisions and then you deal with the consequences, for good or ill.

    The dog was a german shephard puppy, all gangly legged and full of energy, and she loved to be put on a leash and taken out to explore the neighborhood.  It was great exercise for me, too, and I found myself enjoying it almost as much as she did.  The suburban development where I live has a lot of dead end roads; "No Outlet" signs are prevalent, depicting where, forty years ago, developers simply paved streets to nowhere and built houses, knowing that the buyers would come.  They did come, too, and they raised families and watched the kids grow and play and move away and now it was mostly older folks, tending to the houses they had bought and pretty much paid for.  I'd bought a house from one of those older couples two years ago, but there were a lot of those dead end streets that I had never gone down, never had a reason to.

    Early one warm, mid summer evening the dog, Gretchen, and I were on our nightly excursion.  I was letting her pull me along, following her whim when she led me down one of those unfamiliar streets past an older, ranch style house.  Nothing at first distinguished this house from the other ranches on the cul-de-sac, except for an old basketball hoop at the end of the flat driveway.The rusted rim had no net and the support pole was leaning a bit to the left.  It didn't look like anyone had tossed a ball through that sad circle in a long time.  Beyond the basketball hoop was a patch of overgrown weeds and tall grass, and, in the middle of that weed patch was an American flag.  The flagpole was not very high, about the same height as the basketball pole, and the flag was quite large, so it sagged limply in the breezeless evening air, the stripes disappearing into the untended weeds.  The flag was old, filthy and tattered and, though I couldn't see the ground through the tall weeds, its last six inches or so had to be laying in the dirt.  Now I don't consider myself ultra-patriotic; I'm not a veteran, I don't even own a flag.  But there was something about seeing that torn up old flag sitting amid that neglected patch of earth that struck me as incredibly, insultingly wrong.  The house itself seemed fairly well cared for, and the rest of the yard was trimmed, so the contrast between the surrounding neatness and the forlorn little area where the flag was located seemed only to make the slight that much more intentional.  I stared up the driveway into the weed patch, my fists clenched and my heart racing in anger.  As we walked home I remember being surprised at how personally this perceived insult to my country had affected me. 

    I began to make the trip down that dead end a regular part of our walks.  Weeks went by and I saw no sign that anyone actually lived in the house, there were no cars in the driveway and the curtains were always drawn.  "Someone must be taking care of the landscaping, though." I thought, as the yard stayed neatly kept.  Every day Gretchen and I walked past, and every day my indignation at that filthy flag grew.  I seemed to remember from my grade school lessons that when a flag reaches a certain state of decay, and especially if it has come in contact with the ground, then the proper way to dispose of the flag is to burn it.  Soon enough, of course, on one of the days when Gretchen and I were walking past, I decided that it was up to me to do just that.

    Once I'd made up my mind to burn the flag I set immediately about devising a plan.  Obviously I couldn't just walk up in the light of day and set a torch to the thing.  It was a neighborhood full of people, for crying out loud.  It would have to be after dark.  Luckily the summer was winding down, the days were getting shorter and a cool, dry autumn was beginning.  Plus I had the dog as an excuse to be out walking the streets after the sun had set.  I had all but decided to do it when, late one afternoon I was given a reprieve.  I was walking Gretchen past the house, looking, as I always did these days, for the route I should take to make my easiest and least noticeable retreat after I set the flag ablaze.  There aren't too many options on a cul-de-sac.  I scanned along the front of the house, across the walkway toward the front door, thinking that the best way to go might be the most exposed, when I saw the old man.  He was sitting in a folding chair on the small porch just outside the front door of the house.  He was dressed in blue jeans and a faded flannel shirt and was smoking a cigarette with an old coffee can at his feet.  At last I had seen an indication of human life at the house!  I thought that perhaps I could make contact, explain my feelings of affronted patriotism and ask him to take down the offending flag.  I raised my arm in a wave and shouted "Hey there!", and as I did the old man stomped out his cigarette, rose from his chair and went into the house.  "Well, that didn't go exactly as I'd hoped." I thought, as Gretchen and I continued on our way.  Still I felt encouraged.  Now I could put a face with the house.  Perhaps it was just an old man who wanted to fly a flag and couldn't afford a new one, so he kept the old one up even in its disgraceful condition.  I reconsidered my arsonistic intentions.

    The next day I swung by the hardware store on my way home from work and purchased a brand new, large sized flag.  That evening before our walk I wrote out a note to the man I had seen.  I kept the tone as respectful as I was able, explaining that I would like to offer a replacement for the worn, yet obviously revered flag that flew at the end of his drive.  I wrote that I hoped he would accept my gift in the manner in which I intended it, and that he would properly dispose of the standard which had served so long and well in his yard.  I left the flag and the note on his front porch, rang the bell, and then Gretchen and I walked home.  The next evening happened to be the night when everyone in the neighborhood put their trash out for the next mornings pickup.  In all the times that I had walked my dog down the old man's street I didn't ever remember seeing his trash out with everyone else's.  That night though, as I approached his drive, I could see a trash can sitting by the edge of the road.  Neatly placed on top of a pile of garbage was my note and the new flag, still folded, waiting for the trash pickup the next morning.

    To say that I was livid doesn't begin to describe my reaction.  I felt personally attacked.  I redoubled my intent to burn that insult to me and my beloved country.  Yes, somewhere along the way I had developed this sense of myself as being the last living patriot, the burden of righting this wrong perpetrated on my homeland being mine and mine alone.  It never occurred to me to talk about my feelings and my intended course of action with anyone else.  On the surface I told myself that it was what any true American would do given the opportunity and the gumption; more deeply I'm sure I was aware that it was borderline lunacy.  At any rate I finalized my plans and determined to act as soon as the opportunity arose.

          I didn't have to wait very long.  I'd already done most of the advance planning prior to spotting the old man.  The materials I needed, a squirt can of lighter fluid and one of those long handled butane lighters were things I already had at the house.  The rest was just figuring out how the heck to get out of there in a hurry.  So, two nights after I'd found my flag in the trash, I waited until after dark, gathered my supplies, leashed up my canine accomplice and headed out into the cool, breezy night.  The old man's street was quiet, another advantage of the cul-de-sac, no through traffic, and the house itself was dark.  There were no lights in the driveway, nothing that had once illuminated the basketball court, I'd already checked.  Gretchen and I crept up the driveway (more accurately, I crept, the dog trotted along like we belonged there) and I wrapped her leash around the leaning basketball pole.  I looked around, and, satisfied that nobody was watching, I squirted a healthy amount of lighter fluid up and down the cloth flag.  I flicked the wheel on the lighter and, fine American made product that it was, it lit the first time.  Cupping my free hand around the flame to keep the ever increasing wind from blowing it out, I touched the lighter to the butane soaked sections of the flag.  The old cloth burst into flame, the fire racing both up towards the top of the pole and down, following the stain of lighter fluid towards the weeds.  The flag, as I mentioned, was a big one, bigger even than it looked from the road, and it was old and dried out.  So the flame it produced was much bigger than I had anticipated.  The entire driveway and side of the house were brightly outlined in the dancing light.  I felt like I was on display.  That was when things began to go wrong.  With all of my top notch advance planning you would think I would have anticipated that the tall weeds growing all around the flagpole might be a tad dried out and thus prone to combustion.  Well, be assured that it was with complete and utter surprise that I realized that the ground around me was beginning to smoke and then to burn.  I was soon stomping everywhere I saw an errant flame, my shadow in the orange light casting a feverish dance as I frantically tried to avert a ground fire.

    Suddenly a gust of wind snatched a foot long section of the burning flag up and away, rising and darting toward the old man's house.  God damn!  I'd only wanted to dispose of the flag, not burn the house down!  I ran after the flaming, floating cloth, hoping to pull it out of the sky before it did the unthinkable.  Just as it approached the side of the house, though, it caught a downdraft and landed harmlessly in the yard where I quickly stomped it out.  Turning back toward the flag, I was happy to see that it had almost burned itself out.  Still, it had taken a lot longer and was a whole lot more noticeable than I had ever imagined.  I had to get out of there quickly, before anyone came by.  Heck, for all I knew someone could have seen the telltale glow from the flames and called the fire department.  I looked around the ground quickly, just to be sure that none of the weeds were still burning,and, satisfied that there was no more threat of fire, turned to the basketball pole to get Gretchen and then get gone.  Except there was no Gretchen.  I had tied her leash to the pole, I was sure of it.  Had she gotten loose?  I called her name out in a hoarse whisper, it was as loud as I dared.  I ran back towards the flag pole, across past the house and down the street a ways toward the dead end.  Nothing, no sign of her.  I ran then, ran all the way home, hoping that she had just gotten frightened by the fire, worked her leash loose, and would find her way back by herself.  When I got home though, there was still no sign of her.

    Two days passed and I couldn't find her anywhere.  I put up flyers on telephone poles, and walked the streets with a new leash in my hand, hoping she'd turn up.  Her name, address and my phone number were on her collar, so I knew if anyone found her they could reach me.  On the third day after her disappearance I came home from work to find a message waiting on my answering machine.  An old man's voice croaked, "I have your dog.  You know where I am."  That was all.  My initial elation at realizing that Gretchen was o.k. soon turned to apprehension when I remembered the circumstances of her disappearance, and the identity of the man who said he had her.  Did he know it was me who'd burned the flag?  I thought the odds were pretty good that he did.  If he had found her that night or early the next day then definitely he would know, right?  And what about that message?  Not exactly the friendliest way to inform someone that you'd found their missing pet.  Well, no matter.  There was nothing to it but that I had to go over there and collect my dog.  If he knew what I'd done, I'd apologize and try to explain why I felt the need to act as I had.  After all, it wasn't as though I hadn't offered him a replacement.  Besides, he was an old man, I was thirty five, what harm could he do to me?

    I walked the now familiar route to the old man's house.  The weed patch and empty flagpole were exactly as I had left them a few nights prior.  There was, as usual, no car in the driveway and the curtains all were drawn.  I rang the bell, no answer.  I knocked on the door, once, twice, hard, no answer.  I tried the doorknob, it turned and I pushed on the door.  The door opened grudgingly, skidding along the carpeting and the linoleum mat just inside.  I thought that maybe the old man had gone out and left the door open so I could quietly come in, collect my dog and leave.  Wishful thinking.  Though it was still early evening and light outside, the inside of the small house was dark, with all the curtains drawn no light got in.  I could smell stale cigarette smoke and the musty smell of a house too closed up for too long.  The living room was dark, but I could see a light coming from a room down the hallway.  A sound came from the room, like a chair scraping across the floor.  I heard a cough, and I walked slowly toward the lighted room.  As I grew closer I could smell fresh cigarette smoke and a sharper smell, like pungent cheese.  I cautiously entered the room, a small, neatly kept kitchen lit from above by a yellowing fluorescent light.  There was an old metal table with a Formica top between me and the guy I'd heard cough, a wiry, grizzled old man who looked to be nearly eighty.  The table had four metal chairs around it, the old man sat in the chair farthest from me, smoking a cigarette, a full ashtray on the table near his elbow.  He must have been feeling the early autumn chill as he had a blanket across his lap and covering his legs.  About five feet to his left was an old, white gas oven and stovetop.  Gretchen's leash was tied to the oven door.  She lay on the floor in front of the oven, not looking well at all.  She was on her side and panting heavily; when I came in the room she seemed to try to lift her head to look at me, there was a flash of recognition in her eyes, her tail twitched once and then her head went back down and she lay still, her side heaving.

    At the sight of my distressed pet I decided to skip the formalities of a proper introduction.  "What's wrong with my dog?" I asked.

    "Tell you what, why don't you have a seat in that chair right in front of you and we'll talk about a few things, my property and your dog being among them?"  He replied.

    "I'd like to stay and chat, but it appears that I have to get my dog to the vet right away."

    "Your dog is going to be just fine.  Now sit down or I'll call the cops and tell them that some son of a bitch has broken into the home of an old man and they need to come shoot him before I do."

    His tone convinced me that he was not kidding, and with a look at Gretchen, I sat across the table from him.

    "To start with I'll tell you all about that flag you burned up in my yard." He said.  "Then I'll tell you what I aim to do about it."

    "Listen, that flag was a disgrace, it needed to be disposed of.  I offered you a replacement."  I countered weakly.

    "Oh, the flag was a disgrace all right, but not the way you mean it.  That flag was my reminder of a country that doesn't give two shits to Sunday for the people who give their lives in its defense.  Not the military brass, not the politicians and least of all, not the public who benefit from their service every day."

    The old man lit another cigarette and looked out the kitchen window toward the side yard at the rusted basketball hoop and the weed patch where the flag had once flown.  He didn't look at me as he continued.  "I had a grandson, Thomas, Tommy to me, Corporal Thomas L. Stanton to the United States Marine Corps.  His parents died when he was eleven, car crash, and he'd lived with me ever since.  Good kid, used to spend hours out shooting baskets in that driveway.  Tommy did o.k. in school, not good enough to get a scholarship or anything but he could have went to college.  Problem was college costs money, and that was something I didn't have.  So he decided to enlist in the Corps, said he could save money for school that way.  He enlisted for four years back in 1988, that means his enlistment would have been over in 1992.  Those dates mean anything to you?"

    I tried to think of the significance of that time period, but for the life of me I was drawing a blank.  I tried to stall for time while I thought, knew I was forgetting something.  He looked sideways at me and smirked.

    "Of course not," he continued.  "You're just like ninety nine percent of the people in this country, you've forgotten all about the first Gulf War.  It was over and done with so quickly, and really it wasn't any kind of a war at all now, was it?  Just a walk in the sand while the so called enemy ran in terror.  Except that's not how it was for a good many of the soldiers who were there, my Tommy included.  He came back from that war all messed up.  Skin rashes that came and went, said his lungs burned all the time, couldn't sleep for shit, paranoid, thinking that the Iraqi's were coming for him.  He wouldn't leave the house for weeks at a time.  I tried to get the military doctors to help, the term Gulf War Syndrome was just starting to get some attention, but at that time they didn't really believe any of it.  Most of 'em still don't.  But I believed it, hell I was seeing it every day.  This was late 1991, he was still an enlisted soldier, they should have taken care of him.  Instead they ordered him to report to his next post, down in North Carolina, to serve out his enlistment.  He couldn't do it.  We both pleaded for someone in the military to listen to us, he needed medical attention and some time to heal.  It fell on deaf ears.  They sent him to a military doctor who told him he was full of shit and to suck it up like a true marine and recommended an immediate return to active duty.  I called our Senator's office, never heard back from them."

    "They sent Tommy off to Carolina.  I remember the day he left, I went into his room to see if he needed help with anything and he was just sitting on his bed crying.  Big tough marine, sitting there bawling his eyes out.  He said 'Gramps, I can't do this.  I think I'm going crazy.'  I didn't know what to tell him.  Just tried to tell him it'd be o.k., that he had less than a year left to serve, then he could come back home and we could sort it all out together.  He left.  Three days after he reported to the Marine Corps base in North Carolina he blew his brains out in his room.  They gave me the flag that they used to drape his coffin with at his funeral."

    I sat in the kitchen, stunned by the old man's story.  "That was the flag I burned, wasn't it?" I asked lamely.

    He looked at me with cold hatred shooting from his watery eyes.  His voice rose.  "Yes, that was the flag you torched.  You took from me the reminder of my grandson, the symbol of the sacrifice he made to the country that couldn't care less about him.  You took from me my protest, my screaming symbol of rage at the apathy of a country that let a good kid die.  You took from me my focus, my last tether to my grandson.  Now, I've decided to take something from you."

    From under the blanket on his lap the old man withdrew a long barreled pistol and laid it on the table in front of him.  I started to stand, thinking that this might be a good time to get my dog and get out of the house.

    "Sit back down asshole, you're not going anywhere for a while."  He snarled.

    I sat down, like he told me.  The sympathy that I'd felt for him after hearing his story washed out of me like a drain plug had been pulled as I stared at the gun on the table.  A thin smile crept across his face and I realized that he was starting to enjoy this.

    He leaned a little towards me.  "You know, I'm old, and as you get old you tend to sleep pretty lightly.  I woke up the night you were out there, destroying that flag.  I got there just in time to see you scrambling across my lawn after a burning piece that had blown away.  I knew there was no salvaging any of the flag, but I saw that dog tied up, and I decided then that I could take that from you and figure out what to do about this whole thing later."

    I tried an appeal to reason.  "Look, I'm sorry about the flag, I really am, but don't you think that there are better ways to honor your grandson's memory....." I began.

    He cut me off.  "This isn't about honoring anybody's anything.  This is about me paying you back for messing around where you had absolutely no business messing.  And I've decided the payback is going to be you watching me kill this miserable mutt that's been starving in my house for three days.'

    Now Gretchen's pathetic condition made sense.  She hadn't had any food or water since the old man had stolen her that night, she was slowly dying tied up in that kitchen.  I looked at her again, she laid there on the floor, not looking up.

    The old man turned in his chair to face my dog, put his cigarette out in the ashtray and casually picked the revolver up off of the table.  I knew he meant to shoot her right there.  Still seated across from him I shouted "NO!" and pushed on the table as hard as I could, but just a moment too late.  The old man had swung the pistol around to aim at Gretchen and I heard a deafening explosion as the gun went off in that small kitchen.  I'm pretty sure that it was the loud, panicked scream that had erupted from me just as the old man was about to shoot that threw his aim off, but whatever it was, he missed the dog.  The bullet smashed through the small glass window on the front of the oven.  The table slid across the floor and caught the old man across the chest.  His chair, instead of sliding backwards, tilted back on its hind legs and the gun exploded again as he toppled over backwards.  This time the bullet sailed up into the ceiling, the gun barrel pointing up as the chair went over.  I stood up and ran around to where the old man struggled to get to his knees, the table over his head now hindering his effort to rise.  He was on all fours, cursing and wheezing, the gun still in his right hand.  The ashtray had slid off the table, strewing its contents all over the floor underneath him.  I stepped forward and came down hard on his wrist, feeling the old thin bones snap under my work boot.  He crumpled to one side, right shoulder and head driving into the floor.  He had let go of the gun, so I kicked it away from him and turned towards Gretchen.  I quickly untied her leash from the oven door and picked her up.  She was limp in my arms, but still breathing.  Carrying my dying dog I headed out into the darkened hallway.  Though my ears were ringing from the gunshots I could hear the old man struggling to get to his feet behind me.  I made it through the hallway and into the front living room, now totally dark as the light outside had faded.  I cursed myself for not leaving the front door open and as I reached it I could hear the old man stomping through the hallway, heading for the living room.

    Trying to hold Gretchen, who was now squirming and whimpering, in one hand while I opened the stubborn front door with the other was a task that seemed to be taking a monumental amount of time.  Finally I was able to get the door pulled open across the linoleum enough so that we could squeeze out and step down onto the small concrete porch.  As we did I heard another  gunshot go off behind me and the wood splintered in the doorframe to my right.  Tucking Gretchen under my arm like a football I ran across the lawn and down the dead end street toward the intersection and the road that led me home.

    Once home I called the vet and got Gretchen into the emergency room of the animal hospital right away.  I told them she had been lost, that I had just found her and she didn't look like she had been eating or drinking for a while.  They were able to treat her, and kept her in the hospital for a few days.  That was about a month ago and she seems fine now.  We have resumed our nightly walks, and last night we ventured down that old, familiar dead end street.  Everything looks as it did before, the leaning basketball pole and plot of weeds at the end of the drive, though no American flag flies there any longer.  And the house stays shuttered up, looking empty and devoid of life.